How to Make a Basic Brine

hey everybody i'm chef tom with atbbq.com and today on tips and techniques we're going to talk about how to make a basic brine well this is a question we've been asked over the years if i want to make my own brine at home how would i do that so today we're just going to dip our toes into those deep and salty waters of brining by preparing a basic brine and then talking about some flavors now in its simplest terms a brine is a salt water solution what happens when you submerge your meat into this salt water solution is the salt starts to work on those proteins to open them up to the point where that meat can actually take on more liquid than it could before so what happens is you suck in some of that salt you get some flavor out of it and that meat has now taken on more moisture so once you grill it or smoke it or whatever you're doing with it in the end it's more juicy than it would have been had you not brined it so the two things that every brine has to have is water and salt also very common though is sugar and we'll be adding brown sugar to ours today beyond that the world is your oyster you can customize your brine in any way to fit whatever it is that you're cooking for a poultry brine i might use things like thyme bay leaves garlic some red pepper flake or black peppercorns and a reduced amount of sugar today we're making a brine that's more geared toward pork and barbecue so i've got more sugar in the ratio got some earthy stuff like these ancho chilies again the pepper flakes celery seed i love with barbecue some cloves and some garlic but the really important thing when it comes to a brine is getting your ratios right salt to water or sugar and salt to water so that's we're going to go over now now pretty common recommendation is to do one tablespoon of salt for every quart of water we're doing a gallon batch today so that's going to be one cup of salt so that's fine if what you're using is the exact same salt that i'm using but maybe you're not salt varies a lot when it comes to size and weight a table salt is going to weigh a lot more at one tablespoon than a kosher salt will so weight is probably the best way to go about measuring out your brine if you're concerned about it being super accurate i'm using an ounce and a half of salt for every quart of water which happens to come out to about a quarter of a cup per quart now sugar is kind of up to you and you don't really need sugar in a brine but it is nice because it helps caramelization of the meat on the outside when you go to cook it brown sugar is great because it's got that molasses in it but you can also use white sugar you could use sugar in the raw you have some options now you might notice that this is not a gallon of water that's because we're going to do a little trick today you have to have a cool brine to put meat into you can't put your meat in it hot so what i'm going to do is i'm going to use half of my water now and the other half will be in the form of ice so that i can instantly cool down the brine so we're bringing this brine up to a boil and the reason we're doing that is just for the flavors all those flavors we added in there we need those to open up and get sucked into that liquid and the way to do that is to warm it up if we're just doing a basic brine and i'll show you right here with sugar and salt and water you can pretty much just do it at room temperature and whisk until everything's dissolved then you don't have to worry about cooling it down all right so we just need that to come to a boil we don't have to let it sit there and simmer for too long i'm just going to show you the difference in appearance between these two now obviously we've got that chili color going into this one which made it quite a bit darker all right so we've got our two quarts of our brine prepared here since we're doing a gallon batch we need two quarts worth of ice which is just over four pounds of ice so we're going to go in the briner bucket with that and then just pour our hot brine on top and whisk yeah so just a few ice cubes left in there they're mostly all the way melted down but that's fine we want the liquid cold and then you're ready to add your protein today we're doing pork chops nice thick cut pork chops and we'll let these go for about one hour lock that plate into place close it up and throw it in the fridge now when it comes to how long you want to brine your foods i follow a couple rules typically if they're smaller pieces like chicken pieces or individual pork chops that kind of thing i'll just go for about one hour when it comes to larger proteins say like an entire pork loin or an entire chicken or an entire turkey one hour per pound however heavy that meat is all right so our pork chops are now brined gonna pull them out of the liquid and then one thing that's kind of a discussion in the world of brining is whether or not you should rinse your brine off your food i definitely think in this case especially that we should rinse the brine off this food because this is a fairly small piece of meat remember that osmosis has happened where the salt water has been sucked into the meat so we don't need it to be extra salty i think it's best especially for the amount of surface area if you go ahead and rinse these off in some cool water all right so these are rinsed and dried off a bit here just going to hit them with just a little bit of barbecue rub since that's the flavor we're going for and we're going to sear these off smells good so after a little rest we'll just check the internal here see how that looks that looks pretty juicy he definitely firmed up a little bit from that brine as well changes that texture just a little let's check out the flavor oh yeah super juicy i mean really important on top of the brine when you're cooking pork make sure that you cook it to the proper finishing temperature we stopped just shy of 140 on this today that carryover cooking takes a little bit further that's that range where you're going to get really juicy pork every time and putting it in a brine like this just fortifies that for sure when i'm tasting this one and you'd be surprised but you pick up on that ancho a little bit it's not spicy but you get the earthiness of that entre that was in that brine as well as that touch of clove and i think it goes really well with barbecue well thank you guys so much for watching be sure to check out atbbq.com for all of the products featured in today's video if you enjoyed the video hit that subscribe button and if you have any questions or comments or there's anything you'd like to see me cook let me know in the comment section down below and let's be good to one another for more recipes tips and techniques including the three brine recipes we did today head over to atbbq.com the sauce all things barbecue where barbecue legends are made

Channel: allthingsbbq

Views: 333,480

Rating: 4.9251575 out of 5

Keywords: atbbq, allthingsbbq, all things bbq, all things barbecue, bbq, barbecue, brine, brining, how to, tips, techniques, the sauce, chef tom, recipe, recipes

Id: ehw-MGtfXW4

Length: 7min 51sec (471 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 10 2020